Comparing the drag force on heavy quarks inN=4super-Yang-Mills theory and QCD

2006/11/28 by Steven S. Gubser · 142 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Coupling (piping) #High-Energy Particle Collisions Research #Particle physics #Physics #Quantum chromodynamics #Quark #Quark–gluon plasma #hep-th

paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.76.126003

published in Physical review. D. Particles, fields, gravitation, and cosmology/Physical review. D. Particles and fields 76(12) (American Physical Society) · 16 pages, 1 figure. v2: corrected estimate of eta/s, refs added

arxiv created 2006/11/28 · openalex publication_date 2007/12/04 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05

Abstract

Computations of the drag force on a heavy quark moving through a thermal state of strongly coupled N=4 super-Yang-Mills theory have appeared recently. I compare the strength of this effect between N=4 gauge theory and QCD, using the static force between external quarks to normalize the 't Hooft coupling. Comparing N=4 and QCD at fixed energy density then leads to a relaxation time of roughly 2 fm/c for charm quarks moving through a quark-gluon plasma at T=250 MeV. This estimate should be regarded as preliminary because of the difficulties of comparing two such different theories.

Citations

• Centrality dependence of heavy flavor production from single electron measurement in Au +Au collisions
• Heavy-quark probes of the quark-gluon plasma and interpretation of recent data taken at the BNL Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider
• Free energy of a static quark-antiquark pair and the renormalized Polyakov loop in three flavor QCD
• How much do heavy quarks thermalize in a heavy ion collision?
• Energy loss of a heavy quark moving through Script N = 4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills plasma
• Photon and dilepton production in supersymmetric Yang-Mills plasma
• Diffeomorphism, kappa transformations and the theory of non-linear realisations
• Transition temperature in QCD